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MEMORIAL EXERCISES 



IN HONOR OF 



JULIA WARD HOWE 



HELD IN 



SYMPHONY HALL, BOSTON 



ON 



Sunday Evening, January 8, 191 1 

At 8 O'CLOCK 



UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE MAYOR AND 
CITY COUNCIL 




CITY OF BOSTON 

PRINTING D E PA R r M E N T 

I 9 I I 



CITY OF BOSTON. 



In City Council, January 16, 1911. 
Ordered, That the Clerk of Committees, under the direction of 
the Committee on Printinj;, hv authorized to prepare and have 
printed an edition of one tiiousand copies of a volume containing 
an account of the memorial exercises held l)y the City of Boston 
in honor of Julia Ward Howe; the expense of the same to be 
charged to the appropriation for City Council, Incidental 
Expenses. 

Passed. Aj^proved l)y the Mayor January 17, 1911. 

Attest: W. J. DOYLE, 

Assistant City Clerk. 



MEMORIAL EXERCISES 



The speakers were ex-Governor Curtis Guild, 
Jr., Miss Mary E. Woolley, President of 
Mount Holyoke College, and Assistant United 
States District Attorne}' William H. Lewis. 
Judge Robert Grant read a commemorative 
poem. His Honor Mayor John F. Fitzgerald 
presided. 

Music was furnislred by fifty members of 
the Boston Opera House Orchestra, conducted 
by Mr. Wallace Goodrich, a male chorus of 
eighty- members directed by Mr. Archibald T. 
Davison, Jr., and a chorus of seventy-five 
pupils from the Perkins Institution for the 
Blind, directed by Mr. Edwin L. Gardiner. 
Mr. Davison at the organ. 

Twenty-seven commissioned officers from the 
First, Second and Third Regiments, Boston 
School Cadets, acted as ushers. 



ORDER OF EXERCISES 



ORGAN SELECTIONS (before eisht o'clock). 

Sonatina Bach 

Funeral March and Seraphic Song (hillinant 

Mr. Davison. 

CHORALE — "Break Forth, O Beauteous Heaveuly Li<.ht " 
from Clu'istmas Oratorio .... Bacli 
Male Chorus, (Orchestra and Orgau. 

INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 

Mayor Fitzgerald. 

''A HUNTING SONG" . Words ami music l)y .1/r.s. //o(w 
Pupils' Chorus, accompanied by horns, trumpets and 
trombones. 

POEM. 

Judge Grant. 

ADDRESS — Mrs. LIowc's Work for the Advancement of 
Women. 

Miss Woolley. 

GOOD FRIDAY MUSIC from "Parsifal" Wuiiner 

Orchestra. 

ADDRESS. 

]\Ir. Lewis. 

FINALE OF THE SYMPHONY IN C MINOR, No. 5. 

Beethoven 
Orchestra. 

ADDRESS. 

Ex-Governor Guild. 

"BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC." 

Words by Mrs. Howe 
Chorus, witli organ accompaniment. 
The autlience is invited to join. 

ORGAN POSTLUDE (dui'ing the dispersion of the audience). 

"In Memoriam" Hheinberger 

Mr. Davison. 



OPENING ADDRESS 

By Mayor Fitzgerald 



In numbers and in character this j^jathering 
is worthy of the gifted and gracious lady whom 
we commemorate. To some of us it has seemed 
fitting that we should embalm in even more 
permanent form the figure of Julia Ward Howe, 
because she herself avoided transiency and 
aimed at the things which abide. Without 
preaching, she taught how evanescent is the 
life of pleasure and of selfish striving, com- 
pared with the life of thought, of effort, and 
of love. Not only in its duration but in its 
fullness her life seemed to march parallel with 
the century in which she lived and to absorb 
and reflect its highest aspirations. A serious and 
scholarly but fun-loving and spirited girl, she 
married the chivalrous Boston physician, Dr. 
Samuel Gridley Howe, — a man who had served 
as a volunteer in the war for Greek independ- 
ence and who distinguished himself as one of 
the greatest of all teachers and benefactors of 
the blind and the mentally afflicted. The life 
motto of these two companion souls, inarticu- 
late or semiconscious, perhaps, until Lincoln 
crystallized it in an immortal word, was Emanci- 
pation. Is it any wonder that with such a 



6 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 

fortifying spring of inward conviction the forces 
of the growing woman knew no contraction 
through the gradual advent of old age. Time's 
shafts glanced lightly from that crystal armor, 
and her faculties and even her personal charm 
seemed expanding to the close. 

This is why not Boston alone, but America 
and the wdiole world, knew her as a friend. 
The Greek, for whom her husband fought; 
the blind and the imbecile, whose infirmities 
he strove to soften; the negro, whose shackles 
she helped to rive asunder; the Italian patriot, 
the oppressed Armenian, the ever-suffering 
Israelite; the myriads of her own sex, whose 
rights she championed, mourned an ardent 
sympathizer when she passed away. 

In her we honor not merely a fragrant 
l^ersonality with which we have been ])ri\'ileged 
to hold converse, but one who may l)e truly 
called a representative character. In a sense 
she tyi)ifies and stands for the nineteenth 
century, _ for womanhood itself, for America, 
and for Boston. 

Other s]:)eakers will describe Mrs. Howe's 
career in its various phases. You will hear 
tributes to her worth in verse and j^rose, and 
will, I trust, join in singing the great hymn 
which was chanted about a thousand camp 
fires during the Cival War, and which, through 
its Hebraic imagery and prophetic fervor, will 
live as long as the memories of that momentous 
conflict endure. 



HONOR OF JULIA WARD HOWE. 7 

As Mayor of Boston I may fittingly lay 
stress upon one aspect of Mrs. Howe's life, — 
her devotion to the city which, though not 
her birthplace, w^as for seventy years Ik^- in- 
tellectual and spiritual home. In no way can 
I do this more effectively than by quoting 
her own words al)out Boston. Before allowing 
the order of exercises to take its course with- 
out further interru])tion from me, let me read 
a few stanzas from ''A Rhyme for Old Home 
Week," written by Mrs. Howe in her eighty- 
ninth year, and read from this platform by 
Hon. Josiah Quincy on July 30, 1907. The 
comparison is between Rome and Boston. 

Our city is as nolily set, 

Stately her hills, albeit but three. 
Glorious alcove her parapet 

Floats the dear Flag of Liberty. 

Strong sons, the nursling of her hearth. 
For freedom won the western plains; 

To-day, with hajipy pride of l)irth, 

They come to show their s])lendid gains. 

Fair towns they l)uilded as they went; 

Empires above their footsteps grew; 
For Justice stood their armament, 

For all the illustrious truth they knew. 

Now, welcome young and welcome old! 

Salute with joy each sacred bound! 
The cradle of your race behold! 

Let the ancestral anthems sound! 

And let our Boston, from her heights. 
Match with her hills the virtues three, 

And crown them, as with beacons bright^ 
With Faith, and Hope, and Charity. 



MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 



POEM 

READ BY Judge Grant 



v 



No warrior's deeds, no statesman's fame, 

No generous rich man's princely power, 
Nor splendid debts to science claim 

Our civic homage at this hour. 
A woman's memory fills each heart; — 

A patriot woman wise and pure, 
Whose gospel thrilled l)oth camp and mart 

With words of fire that shall endure. 

Scholar and poet, preacher, seer, 

No caste her sympathies confined. 
To aspiration's bugle clear 

Marched all her powers of heart and mind. 
Who listened read upon her face 

The new world thought, the old world ])reed. 
She lived with a patrician grace 

Our great Republic's simple creed. 

To every votary in the world 

Oppressed through struggling to Ix^ free 
Her heart leapt hke a flag unfurled, 

Knew barriers none of race or sea. 
Minerva-like in many a tongue 

Her wit, her eloquence, her song 
Unterrified ])y odds she flung 

To right some helpless brother's wrong. 

Husband and wife! In fame's new troth 
Their names forevermore are twined. 

Our grateful city claims them both. 
His zeal gave eyes unto the blintl. 



HONOR OF JULIA WARD HOWE. 

And hers, white-winded, Parnassus-born, 
In each crushed cause some lode-star found; 

Undaunted friend of hopes forlorn 
Which si)urned the solid ground. 

So humanly she played her part, 

So fully tlid she understand, 
That ever younger grew her heart. 

Youth's dreams were still her promised land. 
The fragrant blossoms on her bier 

Were to her length of days an aureole. 
And thus she vanished from our presence here 

A dust-defying and star-seeking soul. 

Robert Grant. 



10 MEMORIAL EXERCISEH IN 



ADDRESS 

By Miss Mary E. Woolley 



''Who can find a virtuous woman? for her 
price is far above rubies. — Strength and honor 
are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time 
to come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom; 
and in her tongue is the law of kindness." 

Beautiful as are the words of the wise, they 
never come "home to the heart" so truly as 
when read in the light of a life that we have 
known and loved. To-night they ring in our 
ears as if spoken of the woman whom this city 
delights to honor, and wdiose memory and 
influence will be among its chief claims to 
distinction. 

There are many ])ictures of Mrs. Howe 
which it is a pleasure to recall; there are three 
that I shall never forget. The background of 
the first is a rainy, bleak, midwinter Sunday 
evening in this city, and the figure that of a 
little woman, fast nearing her ninetieth year, 
climbing, with painful steps and slow, the long 
flight of stairs leading to Huntington Hall, 
that she might give to a conference on social 
service the insi)iration of her i)ati(aice and of 
her earnest words. 



HONOR OF JULIA WARD HO\^'E. 1 1 

The second picture is of the same Httle old 
lady, in delicate silk and lace, the guest of 
honor at one of the birthday luncheons which 
the New England Club delighted to give her, 
one of its founders, and for many years its 
president — rather, its queen ! Since that day 
the thought of Mrs. Howe is always associated 
with the color and fragrance of ]:)ink roses, 
with quick wit, and keen, almost childlike, 
enjoyment. 

No one present at the Inauguration at Smith 
College last October is likely to forget the third 
picture, of the white-robed figure in academic 
gown and cap, honored by the degree which 
in the granting conferred honor, also, upon 
the college that gave it. 

These three scenes are typical of Mrs. Howe's 
devotion to the broadening of the interests of 
women. Her work for women was simply 
the expression of her conception of a true 
womanhood, as fully sharing with every man 
every human right and every human respon- 
sibility, a discovery which, she said, was like 
the addition of a new continent to the map 
of the world, or of a New Testament to the 
old ordinances. The period just following the 
Civil War was the time of this "awakening" 
to a new sense of the dignity and respon- 
sibility of women, and marks the beginning 
of her identification with various movements 
for the broadening of their interests. The 



12 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 

first was the formation of the club which was so 
closely associated with her name, of which 
she was one of the founders, and for many 
years the president, — rather, the queen! Mrs. 
Howe was a convert to the idea of the Woman's 
Club, as she was a convert to the idea of suf- 
frage for women. She says that she gave 
but a languid assent to the measures proposed 
for the formation of an organization out of 
which grew the New England Woman's Club, 
that for more than forty years has been such 
a power for service in city and state. 

In the early seventies she formed the Boston 
Saturday Morning Club for one of her daughters 
and her girl friends, thus starting into motion 
another current of usefulness in other cities 
as well as in this. But although so closely 
identified with these two organizations, she 
did not limit herself to them, for, as Doctor 
Holmes said of her, she was "eminently club- 
able." The first club to which she had belonged, 
formed in the early days of her residence in 
Boston, was purely social, and devoted mainly 
to "the noble pursuit of crochet"; but that 
organization was ephemeral, lasting only one 
season, not even long enough to complete the 
crochet quilt which was the prime object of its 
existence, — and there are no indications that it 
ever had a successor. A club, as a social organi- 
zation, in her mind, always had combined with it a 
serious purpose, as for example, the Town and 



HONOR OF JULIA WARD HOWE. 13 

Country Club of Newport, which she founded and 
which for many years was true; to its aim of ''up- 
holding the higher social ideals, and of not leaving 
true culture unrepresented, even in a summer 
watering place." Of the possibilities of women's 
clubs she had the highest ideal, and was willing 
to devote time and thought to their formation, 
as she felt that they were "doing so much to 
constitute a working and united womanhood." 

It is impossible to think of Mrs. Howe's 
devotion to the broadening of the interests of 
women without thinking also of the cause of 
equal suffrage. To have the courage of her 
convictions was not a new experience; her 
allegiance to the anti-slavery movement had 
been given when the unpopularity of that cause 
was at its height in the North. With the end 
of the Civil War the current of thought started 
by those wonderful experiences in freedom and 
l^rogress, — a progress largely aided by women, — 
together with her new conception of womanhood, 
was having its logical outcome in changing her 
attitude toward the question of suffrage for 
w^omen. While in the midst of this train of 
thought, an invitation to attend a meeting in 
behalf of w^oman suffrage was accepted, rather 
reluctantly, as was also an invitation to a 
seat on the platform; but that meeting, with 
its simple, strong, convincing arguments, and, 
most convincing of all, the words and per- 
sonality of Lucy Stone, disarmed all her prejudice, 



14 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 

and resulted in her entire capitulation. When 
called upon to speak all that she could say 
was, ''I am with you," a statement more than 
borne out by the service of the years which 
followed. 

In no work in which Mrs. Howe engaged were 
the heroic qualities of her nature more in evi- 
dence. The movement was not popular, far from 
it, — but the uni)opularity of the cause had not a 
feather's weight with her when once convinced 
of its righteousness. Her courage was boundless, 
her championshi}) unfaltering. She said of her 
early connection with the movement, "We were 
called upon to perform yeomen's service," — and 
the yeomen's service she gave cheerfully in the 
years that followed, as long as her physical 
sti*engtli made it ])ossil)le. To the very end of 
her life she served, for within the last two years 
she i)ublished a widely quoted article giving 
twelve strong and cogent reasons for suffrage, 
and one of her last public acts was taking a 
census of ministers and editors in the woman 
suffrage states, asking whether the results of ec^ual 
suffrage are good or bad. But in s})ite of all that 
has been accomplished l^y her many addresses in 
West and East and South, her annual pil- 
grimage to the State House, her articles and 
circulars, I am not sure that it is in this way 
that she has done most for the cause that was 
dear to her. The greatest asset was in the 
woman herself, the intellectuality which she 



HONOR OF Jl'LIA WAUD HOWE. 15 

brought to the consideration of the subject, her 
philosophic attitude and reasoning power, her 
(juick wit,— exercised often to the confusion of 
her opponent,— her ''sweet reasonableness," dis- 
arming opposition. 

Closely allied with these other movements 
for broadening the interests of women was one 
which by its very name indicated its oloject. 
The Association for th(^ Advancement of Women 
was the outcome of a call issued by Sorosis in 
May, 1868, for a C^ongress of Women to be held 
in New York that autumn, and the object of 
the Association, as adopted by the first Congress, 
was "to receive and present i)ractical methods 
for securing to women higher intellectual, moral 
and physical conditions, and ther(>by to improve 
all domestic and social relations." It is not a 
surprise to find that Mrs. Howe was one of the 
signers of the call, and that she read the Jird 
paper at the fird congress, on the subject, "How 
can women best associate their efforts for the 
amehoration of society." 

The history of this remarkable Association, 
with its annual congresses for the succeeding 
thirty years, is the history of the realization of 
its lofty aim, to arouse thought along many 
fines, scienoe, art, education, philosophy, ethics, 
political and social science, industrial training. 
Many eminent women were connected with it, 
but it is interesting to notice in the reports of 
the congresses the reiteration of the phrase, 



16 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 

''Mrs. Howe in the chair." For many years 
she was president. Her president's addresses 
struck again and again the keynote of the Asso- 
ciation, and of her own high aims for women: "Our 
ruhng idea of the advancement of women has 
been that of an advance — in intelligence and 
in useful service"; — "We are women seeking to 
promote the advancement of women, not in the 
objects of personal ambition, not in any inhar- 
monious rivalry with men, but in the under- 
standing and fulfilment of womanly duty, and 
in the recognition of all that this involves." 

There is a logical connection between Mrs. 
Howe's interest in the Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Women and her j^residency of the 
Women's Departments at fairs. It was inevi- 
table that she should be the president of the first 
department of that kind at an imi)()rtant fair in 
Boston in 1882, and a year later of the Women's 
D(^partment at a great World's Fair in New 
Orleans. By means of a special department for 
the exhibition of the inventions and handicraft 
of women, it was possible to attract attention 
to them, and thus to arouse new interest in 
woman's industrial capacity. At the New Orleans 
Fair her fertile mind devised another scheme 
for attracting attention to the department, and 
the result was a series of short talks, given by 
experts, explaining the exhibits. 

It goes without saying that Mrs. Howe was 
interested in the cause of hiiiher education for 



HONOR OF JULIA WARD HOWE. 17 

women, a cause which owes incalculable debt 
to her and to other eminent women who stood 
for woman's advancement in all lines of progress. 
It seemed peculiarly fitting that her last public 
appearance should ]:»e at an academic occasion, 
significant in itself, but all the more significant 
because of her presence, and that the last public 
honor which she received was the highest of 
honorary degrees, conferred by a woman's college. 
If Mrs. Howe found no path for progress, 
she blazed a trail! Back in the early seventies, 
in the time of the Franco-Prussian War, she had 
a sudden realization of the cruel and unnecessary 
character of the contest, and there was forced 
upon her the question, ''Why do not the mothers 
of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent 
the waste of that human life of which they 
alone bear and know the cost?" With Mrs. 
Howe to thiid- was to act, and the result of 
this conviction was an ap]:)eal to w^omanhood 
throughout the civilized world to awake to 
the knowledge of the sacred rights vested in 
them as mothers, to protect human life,— an 
appeal translated into French, Spanish, Italian, 
German, Swedish, and sent broadcast. For 
the next two years much of her time was 
spent in correspondence with leading women 
in other countries and in preparation for a 
meeting in New York for the purpose of con- 
sidering and arranging for a World's Congress 
of Women in behalf of International Peace. 



18 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 

Two of these meetings were held in New^ York, 
one in the late autumn of 1870, addressed by 
William Ciillen Bryant; another in the follow- 
ing si:)ring, at which David Dudley Field was 
one of the speakers. In the spring of the 
following year she went to England, hoping 
by her personal efforts to realize her ideal of 
a Woman's Peace Congress in London, but 
although warmly received by friends of the 
cause, she found little encouragement from exist- 
ing societies, and w^as refused permission to 
speak at the meetings of the English Peace 
Society on the ground that women never had 
spoken at those meetings! Most human beings 
would have taken the next ship for home; 
Mrs. Howe hired a moderate sized hall, the 
Freemasons' Tavern, and for hve or six Sunday 
afternoons held a peace service, consisting of 
a ])rayer, the reading of a hymn, and a care- 
fully pre]:)ared address from some scripture text. 
Befor(^ her return home she attended as dele- 
gate a Peace Congress held in Paris, but when 
she asked to speak was told that she might 
si^eak to the officers in a side room after the 
adjournment, — an invitation which, it is hardly 
necessary to add, she accepted. 

Of the outcome of this effort she said with 
her characteristic modesty and simjilicity, ''I 
cherished the hope that I had sown some seed 
which would bear fruit thereafter," a hope the 
realization of which we can indeed bear witness. 



HONOR OF JULIA WAR]) HOWE. 19 

It is no less characteristic of her that when she 
found that the time for a World's Congress of 
Women was not ripe she turned to a less ambi- 
tious, but perhaps not less effective, way of 
calling their attention to the great cause, and 
instituted a June Festival, known as Mothers' 
Day, and devoted to the advocacy of peace 
doctrines. Her own modest statement, ''I had 
some success in carrying out this plan," hardly 
indicates its widespread observance — in Edin- 
burgh, London, Geneva, Constantinople, as well 
as in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Wash- 
ington, and many smaller places in our owm 
country, an observance continued for many 
years. 

In the light of the present widespread senti- 
ment against w^ar, and in favor of international 
arbitration, Mrs. Howe's efforts of forty years 
ago seem the inspiration of a prophet. Her 
emphasis, like that of oiu^ most earnest thinkers 
to-day, was placed not on the cruelly of w^ar, 
but on its terrible waste of the best life, as 
well as of material resources; and the substitute 
urged for resort to arms was an International 
Jur}^ to settle all questions of difference between 
nations, the forerunner of present schemes for 
international arbitration. 

A discussion of Mrs. Howe's , devotion to the 
broadening of the interests of women would be 
incomplete w^ithout reference to her connection 
with the Woman's Ministerial Conference. The 



20 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 

first Conference in 1873 was called l:)y her, the 
name was her suggestion, for many years she 
was the president, one of the last meetings at 
which she presided was a meeting of this Con- 
ference, held last May in the Congregational 
House, and only three short weeks before her 
earthly ministry was finished, she wrote to the 
secretary of that Conference about women 
ministers and of her plan to write a series of 
papers on religion for publication. 

She loved to preach, and often did so, in 
different cities and for various denominations 
in connection with the meetings of the Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Women, as well 
as in her own home church, and even during 
visits to Rome and Jerusalem. Her only regular 
''])astorate," as far as I know, was at Santo 
Domingo, during her own and Doctor Howe's 
visit to the Island, when at the recjuest of a 
small congregation of poor colored peoi:)le, who 
had no minister, she conducted a Sunday even- 
ing service during almost all the weeks of her 
stay there. The little wooden building had only 
a mud floor, the hymn books were tattered, — of 
small consequence, since few of the congregation 
could read, — but it is not difficult to imagine 
the ins]Mration of those services, and of the 
sermons carefully i^repared by the devoted 
preacher, "anxious really to interest those poor 
shepherdless sheep." 

Mrs. Howe's work for women is not to be 



HONOR OF JULIA WARD HOWE. 21 

measured only or ebiefly l:>y the organizations 
which she founded, fostered, inspired, — impor- 
tant and far-reaching as that work is. "Oh, 
had I earher known the power, the nobility, 
the intelligence, which lie within the range of 
true womanhood, I had surely lived more wis(^ly, 
and to better purpose," she exclaimed. Her 
confidence in women, her own nobility of char- 
acter, are a challenge to the womanhood of the 
country to broader, truer, nobler living. 

There is no answer to pessimism more con- 
clusive than the long line of noble men and 
women, not onl^y of the past, but of the present; 
3^et it is difficult in any age to find a life so 
many sided, so complete, as that of Mrs. Howe. 
Musician and poet, philosopher and critic, phil- 
anthropist and patriot, public speaker and 
leader, ' devoted wife and mother, — she was 
all this and more. What she did was but the 
expression of what she iva.s, of a character 
wonderful in its almost perfect balance of 
powers; keen of mind, and witty of speech, yet 
with the law of kindness in her tongue; intense 
in conviction and having the courage of her 
convictions, yet always reasonable and open- 
minded, quick in initiative, yet patient in the 
realization of her plans; discriminating in her 
judgments, but generous in her estimates of 
others; combining wide intellectual interests and 
attainments with a childlike simplicity; hospi- 
table to new^ thought, but steadfast in her relig- 



22 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 

ions faith; manifesting alike the spirit of the 
soldier and the spirit of the Christ. 

I have made a voyage upon a golden river 
'Neath clouds of opal and of amethyst. 

Along its banks l)right shapes were moving ever, 
And threatening shadows melted into mist. 

The eye, unpraeticed, sometimes lost the current, 
When some wild rapid of the tide did whirl, 

While yet a master hand beyond the torrent 
Freed my frail shallop from the perilous swirl. 

Music went with me, fairy flute and viol. 
The utterance of fancies half expressed. 

And with these, steadfast, beyond pause or trial, 
The deep, majestic throl) of Nature's breast. 

My journey nears its close, — in some still haven 
My bark shall find its anchorage of rest. 

When the kind hand, which every good has given. 
Opening with wider grace, shall give the best. 



HONOR OF JULIA WARD HOWE. 23 



ADDRESS 

Bv Mr. William H. Lewis 



A singularly favored, useful and beautiful 
human life is ended. 

It was crowned by length of days, and 
enriched, beyond measure, by the service of 
her fellows. A golden link in the chain which 
connected this generation with the golden age 
of American literature, of American constitu- 
tional reforms, has been broken. 

Of all that glorious companj^ of men and 
women of letters and reformers who, by what 
they were, by what they said, and what they 
did, shed new luster upon Boston, Massachu- 
setts, and New England, there remain now 
only Frank Sanborn of Concord, and Thomas 
Wentworth Higginson. May these venerable 
citizens continue long to abide with us, objects 
of our reverent affection and pious regard! 

The death of Julia Ward Howe at any time 
would have come as a deep grief to her fellow- 
citizens. She was one of our civic institutions. 

Fifty years she reigned over us, queen of 
all our hearts, the idol of those who knew 
her best, and just as three decades ago when 
the Prince Consort, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, 



24 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 

that true knight-errant of humanity, swift to 
succor the Greek strugghng for independence, 
or aid the African fleeing the bonds of slavery, 
or patient in unbarring the gates of light to 
the blind, jmssed away, the Commonwealth 
took notice of his death, so Boston now honors 
the memory of the ideal wife and mother 
who inspired the work of the great philanthro- 
]Mst and helped to make enduring the name 
of HoW'C. 

I find but one parallel to two such lives in 
all history, that of which Tennyson sings in 
the Idyls of the King, — Victoria and Albert 
the Good. 

The tw^ain were indeed one flesh. 

Through all the years of her widowhood, 
the love of her children, her grandchildren 
and great-grandchildren encompassed and com- 
forted her, the love of her countrymen cher- 
ished her, and now "God's great love has 
set her at his side again." 

Not quite a year ago our friend w^as with 
us in this very hall, and from this place read 
her poem upon the centenary- of Lincoln's 
birth. Age then had laid its withering hand 
upon her body, her steps were uncertain, the 
voice feeble, but her mind clear and strong. 
Her ]:)eautiful soul and stainless character shown 
from every lineament and feature, and her very 
presence seemed a benediction, sublime. Godlike. 



HONOR OF JULIA AYARD HOWE. 25 

Now another poet rises here to sing the 
praises of the poet of yesterda}', so sw^ift are 
the changes of human hfe. 

Born to the purple of wealth and family, 
she counted the social tie as nothing, put aside 
a life of luxurious ease and idleness, which 
might have been hers, and threw in her lot 
with the humble workers for God and humanity. 
She did much to redeem the selfishness and 
indifference of her class in her day, and helped 
immeasurably to bring it into closer touch 
with the people. Educated, broadly speaking, 
beyond most women of her day, not only 
through the best teachers and books, but by 
contact with the best minds, — not alone in 
her own country, but in England and upon 
the continent,— Julia Ward Howe in many 
lines of human thought and activity became 
one of the makers of public opinion of the 
nineteenth century. 

Under the influence of Emerson, Margaret 
Fuller and the Transcendental School of Phil- 
osophy, the preaching of Theodore Parker and 
James Freeman Clarke, she early espoused by 
voice and pen, from the pulpit and through 
the Press, the cause of freedom and liberalism 
in religion. If you count this service small, 
remember the distance we have traveled. Puri- 
tan Boston once hanged Quakers on Boston 
Common and exiled Roger Williams in the 



26 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 

name of religion. The first great fact of the 
nineteenth century was complete religious tolera- 
tion. 

The advancement of the cause of women 
engaged her life-long service. Beginning her 
labors with Lucy Stone, Mary A. Livermore, 
Wendell Phillips, George William C^u'tis, and 
many other notable men and women, she lived 
to see her sex enjoy ecjual suffrage in five 
American states, in Australia and New Zealand, 
and a (lualified suffrage in twenty-nine American 
states, in Great Britain and in many other parts 
of the civilized world. In her day she beheld 
the higher education opened up to women in 
the establishment of upwards of a hundred 
schools and colleges, and the doors of industry 
swing wide to admit the gentler sex. 

With a woman's horror of war, the cause of 
universal peace enlisted her sympathy, upon 
which cause her voice was heard in many lands. 
She saw the Crimea, the Givil, the Franco- 
Prussian wars, but many things had been done 
in her day to alleviate the horrors of war. 
Arbitration had come to take the place of the 
old method of deciding national honor by'' bloody 
combat," and within a year of her death a 
great American philanthropist has given ten 
millions to the cause of peace, and a per- 
manent court of arbitral justice seems one 
of the possibilities of the near future. 

Every man looks out upon the world from 



HONOR OF JULIA WARD HOWE. 27 

his own peculiar angle of vision, reads history 
through the eyes of his own experience. The 
colored race, therefore, in common with the 
Greek, Italian, and Armenian, pays grateful 
tribute to the memory of Julia Ward Howe. 

Upon the very last page of her "Memoirs" 
she writes with exultant pride: "Lastly and 
chiefly, I have had the honor to plead for 
the slave when he was a slave" — "To stand 
with the illustrious champions of ^ justice 
and freedom." No one could long sit 
under the preaching of Theodore Parker and 
not become abolitionist, and so it was at one 
of Parker's "at homes" on Sunday evening 
that she met the elder Garrison and was at 
once taken, as she said, " by a sort of glory of 
sincerity in his ways and words" and was soon 
found singing out of the same hymn book 
with the great abolitionist and in the same 
tune. In the same way Wendell Phillips came 
into her life, and she offered to join Maria 
Chairman and Lydia Maria Child as a personal 
bod^'guard for the great orator when threatened 
by the mobs of that day. Sumner w^as her 
idol. She understood the defects and greatness 
of his character. It is related that Mrs. Howe 
upon going to him one day to seek assistance 
for a fugitive slave was told by Sumner: "I 
am not interested in individuals, my only con- 
cern is for the race," whereupon she replied, 
with fine satire, "I am glad God Almighty, 



28 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 

by the latest accounts, has not got so far as 
this." The great senator afterwards acknowl- 
edged for once that his moral vision was askew 
and asked that gracious lady to strike the 
entry from her diary. 

There are some people to-day who would 
accord to the race as a whole every right, 
but shrink from contact with individuals; others 
who think poorly of the Negro as a whole, 
but love jjarticular individuals. The great prob- 
lem is to bring l)oth classes together as we 
find them in Mrs. Howe. The day of comj^lete 
toleration of race will surely come, just as 
the day of complete toleration in religion has 
already arrived. 

When many were afraid, and stood aloof, 
this woman of gentle birth and breeding opened 
the door with her own hands to welcome to 
her home John Brown, the martyr, and his 
body "mouldering in the grave" led to the 
greatest lyric of the Civil War. 

It was a labor of love for her to join wdth 
Doctor Howe in editing the Boston "Connnon- 
wealth," a daily paper devoted to the promotion 
of abolition opinion, whose columns were open to 
both sides and therefore read by l^oth sides, 
the paper which advocated the rei)eal of the 
fugitive slave law, resisted the rendition of Sims 
and contributed more than any other perhaps 
to the election of Sumner to the Senate. 

Her early poems give evidence too that her 



HONOR OF JULIA WARD HOWE. 29 

great soul was one with the slave and the 
cause of freedom. The poem "Tremont Temple" 
describes a meeting at which Sumner and 
Douglass spoke : 

"Two figures fill the temple to my sight 

One has the beauty of our northern l)l()()tl, 
And wields God's thunder in his lifted hand. 
The other wears the solemn hue of night; 

he slings 
A dangerous weapon too, a broken chain. 

Again the New Flag sings of the ecjuality of all men. 

We'll not lift men for their features nor love them for their 

skins, 
But look to the great soul father in whom we are All of kin." 

Her greatest title deed to fame, that by which 
she will live longest in history, is the "Battle 
Hymn of the Republic," written at the very begin- 
ning of the war for emancipation. More than 
a battle hymn, it was a song of faith sul^lime, a 
"ballad of purest patriotism, a pean of triumph. 
Oh gifted poet, true patriot, inspired prophet, thine 
eyes indeed beheld the glory of the coming of the 
Lord, not only in camp-fires and 'i)urnished rows 
of steel," but in a race set free, a nation redeemed, 
a country reunited forever! Thy fading sight 
beheld still "the glory of the coming of the Lord" 
in ten millions of my race struggling painfuhy 
through poverty and ignorance, patiently through 
wrong and oppression, persistently through every 
difficulty to complete American citizenship. 



30 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 

He was not mistaken who said: ''Give me the 
making of the songs of a people — I care not who 
makes their laws." All history attests this truth! 
The songs of the lame schoolmaster of Athens 
inspired the Spartans to victory; Rouget de I'lsle, 
singing the Marseillaise, revolutionized his coun- 
try! The heart songs of a people make its public 
sentiment, and public sentiment enacts its laws. 
Who shall estimate the influence of the "Battle 
Hymn of the Republic" in writing the great war 
amendments of the Constitution? 

Mrs. Howe never lost her interest in the colored 
people. Whether in San Domingo with Doctor 
Howe upon the famous commission of General 
Grant or at the woman's exhibit at the World's 
Fair in New Orleans she brought together the 
colored people to tell them the story of the great 
heroes of freedom whom she had known. 

In her greatest work for the advancement of 
women Mrs. Howe never drew the color line. She 
welcomed the Woman's Era Glub into the Massa- 
chusetts Federation, spoke often to its members, 
lent her moral and active support to the efforts 
of Mrs. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin in behalf of 
colored women; made her a Director of the Massa- 
chusetts Federation and sent her as a Massa- 
chusetts delegate to the General Federation of 
Women's Clubs. 

Some ten years ago when lynching, now happily 
on the wane, was all too prevalent throughout 
the country, the colored women of Boston, among 



HONOR OF JITLIA WARD HOWE. 31 

them IVIrs. Butler R. Wilson, Mrs. U. A. Ridley, and 
Miss Maria Baldwin, called a meeting in (/bicker- 
ing Hall to protest against this barbarous prac- 
tice. I shall never forget this venerable woman, 
then eighty years of age, coming forward to address 
that audience, the sympathy of her manner, the 
sincerity of her speech, and with what tremendous 
emphasis she declared: ''What a government per- 
mits, that it does." "The blood of guiltless vic- 
tims stains the souls of those legislators who sit 
with folded hands while torture fires are lighted." 
"I cry, shame upon them!" "Shame to our nation, 
and a disgrace to our civihzation!" 

The life of Julia Ward Howe recalls, next to 
the Revolution-, the most glorious chapter of Massa- 
chusetts history. Garrison sounded the reveille 
of freedom. Phillips, Sumner, Parker, Abby, Kelly, 
Foster; Maria Weston Chapman, Lydia Maria 
Child, by arousing pul:>lic opinion, prepared the 
army of emancipation. John A. Andrew, our great 
war governor, at the call of the nation summoned 
the very pick and flower of the Commonwealth 
to meet the issue which she had done most to raise. 
The Websters, the Higginsons, the Bowditches, 
the Hallowells, the Livermores and the number- 
less hosts of heroes and patriots (a hundred thou- 
sand and more), marched past the State House 
in those four years of Civil War with the "Battle 
Hymn of the Republic" ringing in their souls, and 
as Christ died to make men holy, they (thirteen 
thousand and more), on field, in hospital and in 



32 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 

prison, died to make men free. And the first object 
that greets the stranger on Boston Common j^onder 
is the granite shaft and its beautiful symbohc fig- 
ures, dedicated "To the men of Boston who died 
for their country on land and sea in the war which 
kept the nation whole, destroyed slavery and 
maintained the Constitution, the grateful city has 
built this monument that their example may speak 
to coming generations." 

In every public s(|uare and memorial liall stands 
some statue, some picture of those who led in the 
great cause of freedom, mute memorials of a people's 
gratitude, exami)les and a lesson to future genera- 
tions that true fame and glory are reached only 
through service. 

Among them all is there no place for one repre- 
sentative woman? 

The Greek said: "A city is judged by the char- 
acter of the men it crowns." Let us beware lest 
we be judged by the character of those we refuse to 
crown. From her "Memoirs" she speaks to Boston 
at this hour: "I have been welcomed in Faneuil 
Hall when I have stood there to rehearse the merits 
of public men, and later to plead the cause of 
oppressed Greece and murdered Armenia." 

She will never be welcomed there in the flesh 
again, but whether her picture, keeping company 
with the illustrious and the great, shall look down 
upon us from those sacred walls or not, her voice 
will still echo and re-echo with "the voices of free- 
dom" there as long as the old "Cradle of Liberty" 
stands. 



HONOR OF JULIA WAP.D HOWE. 33 

In the great movements of the century with which 
Mrs. Howe was identified there are those who did 
more than she in any one of them but none who 
did more in all than she. 

It is a great thing to be able to say at the end 
of a long life: '^I gave my sympathy to liV)era]- 
ism in religion, and bigotry is pufit; I lent a hand 
to the struggling slave, and freedom is here; I put 
shoulder to the wheel in the cause of advancement 
of women and lo! a new creature appears!" 

She never outlived her usefulness, answered to 
the latest hour every public demand, giving freely 
of her time, her talents, her genius, and her gracious 
self to every good cause and to every public work 
until the Master's final call. Let us believe that in 
the Great Beyond she still finds happiness in the 
service of God and humanity, for that only could 
be Heaven to her. 

" The house is dust, the voice is (hniib 
But through the undyiug years to couie , 
The spark that glowed within her soul 
Shall light our footsteps to the goal 

Such lives as this put death to scorn, 
They lose our day to find God's morn." 



34 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 



ADDRESS 

By Hon. Curtis Guild, Jr. 



^'Ye shall walk in all the ways which the T.ord 
3^our God hath commanded yoii that ye may live 
and that it may be well with you and that ye 
may prolong your days in the land which ye shall 
possess." 

In some of the Bible texts mere length of life 
is constantly promised as a w^ondrous blessing. 
In these words from Deuterononi}' I have cjuoted 
and in certain other texts a more nearly com- 
plete measure of human happiness is promised 
in a long lif(^ that shall be a useful life and, 
because of the joy, not of riches but of service, 
an absolutely happy life. 

Such a life we commemorate to-day, a life far 
beyond the allotted mortal span of three score 
years and ten. Yet was the strength that 
carried it onward to nearly the full count of a 
century neither labor nor sorrow, but such an 
al)ounding joy that when the end did come the 
natural grief that such a life, alike strong and 
gentle, must have an end was almost over- 
whelmed with the gust of exaltation that such 
a noble influence should have been so long 
prolonged. 



HONOR OF JULIA WAHl) llOWE. 35 

Julia Ward Howe eamo into the world almost 
at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the 
most wonderful century in the history of civili- 
zation. She began her life of i)ublic usefulness 
almost as a child. 

In an infinitely nobler sense than of Cleojmtra, 
Shakespeare might have written of her his famil- 
iar line: ''Age cannot wither her nor custom stale 
her infinite variety," for not as a brilliant despot 
scheming for further dominion, but as a gracious 
presence among the oppressed and suffering of 
all the world did this good woman's influence 
lead ever upward and onward till not age (she 
was never old) but the smiling angel that we 
all must meet releasetl her from her lal)ors and 
summoned her to her reward. 

The nineteenth century saw civilization advance 
further in its own brief cycle than in the 
eighteen hundred years that had gone before. 
Indeed it is a question whether or not the 
seventeenth century, in spite of the bright light 
of liberty that flamed forth at its close, was not 
in some respects actually lower in the level of 
civilization than the thriving days of the Roman 
empire. The Pax Romana for centuries at least 
enforced a universal peace in all the civilized 
world of its day, and the legionaries fought but 
to defend that peace from the savages that 
swarmed about the ]:)orders of that civilization. 
The dail}' life of the , Roman home, with its fresh 
air, its constant baths, its exultation in a decora- 



36 MEMORIAL EXERCLSES IN 

tion and an architecture free from meretricious 
details and beautiful in its simplicity, displayed 
a higher standard, not merely of taste, but of 
sanitation than that of our great grandfathers. 
The Roman galley was not as swift as the steam- 
boat, but it was infinitely swifter than the heavy 
bluff bowed vessels of Nelson, and the journey 
from London to Rome over the superb Roman 
roads, with the perfect posting service, through a 
Europe where the Roman law buttressed social 
order, was not merely infinitely swifter but in- 
finitely safer in the days of Trajan than in the 
days of George the Fourth. 

Not without reason did the chasseur w^ith his 
military uniform figure universally on the carriage 
box, till very recently, even on the peaceful 
rounds of calls of the fair aristocracy of the 
continent. Less than a century ago an armed 
defender on the traveling carriage was an abso- 
lute necessity in the simplest journey. Not with- 
out reason did the leaders of liberty and even 
the leaders of fashion at the beginning of the 
new dawn introduce methods and models from 
Greece and Rome. It was as natural that 
Patrick Henry should quote not a Walpole but 
a Brutus in his imi^assioned appeal, as it was 
natural and sensible for Napoleon, who for his 
little day ruled the fashions as he ruled the 
fates, to supersede the rococo flourishes and 
fur])elows of a century of artificiality with a 



HONOR OF JULIA WARD HOWE. 37 

return to the simple liiK^s of Roman taste in 
furniture as well as in dress. 

The nineteenth century accomplished more 
than a recovery from this decadence from 
classic times. It lifted the world far above 
them. Some centuries have been great with 
this or that man of letters. The nineteenth 
century saw the swift spread of universal 
education produce in all nations such a flood 
of literature as had never been imagined pos- 
sible. Invention took on the flight of fair}^ 
legends. Time and space have been nearly 
annihilated and London brought nearer to Bos- 
ton than Washington used to be. The night 
no longer is an impediment to work nor, to 
the old extent, a cloak to crime. China and 
Japan have been added to international rela- 
tions arid international commerce. Africa, not 
Egypt only, has been explored and opened to 
industry. Slavery, from the beginning of the 
world a universal condition, has been in one 
century stamped out of every civilized nation, 
and neither the American negro nor the Rus- 
sian serf now holds up manacled hands as he 
prays. Religious differences are no longer the 
basis of bloodshed. Science has not only 

increased human comfort but lengthened 
human life. Statesmen no longer for any reason 
encourage warfare, but seek only how they 
may avoid it, and if the Hague Tribunal has 



38 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 

not yet full.y realized ''The parliament of man, 
the federation of the world," it has at least 
gone far along the road to a universal peace 
upheld not upon the spears of the Roman 
legionaries but upon the voluntary brotherhood 
of all the children of men. 

Of this century, so rich in human achieve- 
ment, this woman, so tenderly remembered, 
was the very spirit. Of it she might well 
say, and with even greater truth than did the 
classic hero of the deeds of his country, ''All 
of which I saw and a part of which I was." 

She was not, of course, a scientist nor an 
inventor, save as a poet is an inventor. Yet 
in what other walk in life did she not have 
her part ? She never even approached the 
methods of a noisy agitator. Strong as were 
her views and great as was her influence, her 
advance through the garden of her life was 
ever restrained l:)y the flowering borders of 
courtesy and kindness. She was a gentlewoman, 
nor did it injure her public service that she 
was to the end in every sphere emphatically 
a womanly woman. The editor of "The Com- 
monwealth" and of the "Woman's Journal" was 
a devoted wife and a tender mother. The 
fearless public champion of great national causes 
was not ashamed to confess in her reminis- 
cences — with the innocent pride of a good woman 
in the fact that she is also good to look upon — 
her girlish social triumphs in a girl's kingdom. 



HONOR OF JULIA WARD HOWE. 39 

and of the attentions showered upon her b}' 
those to whom her mind was not her onl}'' 
attraction. 

Born in Xew York with an ancestry that 
strangely blended the blood of Roger Williams 
with that which also flowed in the veins of 
General jMarion, ''the Swamp Fox of the Caro- 
linas/' the life of Mrs. Howe belongs neverthe- 
less to the Commonwealth where she found a 
perfect marriage with a husband whose ideals 
were as lofty as her own. 

Her literary activities had begun at sixteen 
in the shape, not merely of fugitive verses, but 
of serious essa3"s which had quickly found pub- 
lication. 

What a circle of friends that was that quickly 
surrounded this gifted girl in her new Boston 
home! Her husband was justly honored as 
the first among those blessed mortals who 
have been able to make the deaf hear, the 
dumb talk, and the blind see. James Free- 
man Clarke was her friend and pastor, Horace 
Mann was an intimate; so were Sumner and 
Andrew; so were Longfellow, and Holmes, 
and Lowell, and Whittier, and Emerson and 
Whipple, and all that brilliant group that made 
Boston an international literary center and 
the ''Atlantic Monthh^ " an intellectual force 
whose influence had no boundaries. It is not 
extraordinary that the son and daughters born 
to such a man and woman in such surround- 



40 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 

ings should have themselves in both senses 
of the word honored their father and their 
mother. 

Two of the great causes with which Mrs. 
Howe was most closely identified have already 
been described by those who have preceded 
me. Her defence of the oppressed slave was 
not the least of the influences that opened 
the door of freedom, and even those who may 
have disagreed with her ever had unbounded 
respect for the splendid sincerity of her pure 
and unselfish efforts in the cause of suffrage 
for women. 

Even in so long a life two such causes would 
seem to have sufficiently occupied any woman's 
time. It would, however, be hard to recall any 
man or woman of Massachusetts, unless it be 
the man whom Doctor Holmes called the human 
dynamo, Edward Everett Hale, who approached 
Mrs. Howe in the character of a universal 
philanthropist. She was not merely an eager 
worker for the abolition of slavery and for 
the admission of women into the political duties 
and activities of men. She was not merely a 
strong champion of her country as a Union 
throughout the war that settled that, in spite 
of the nomenclature of the Constitution, this 
country is to endure not as a Federation but 
as a Nation. 

When the hand of death was almost upon 
her she was before the Legislature of Massa- 



HONOR OF JULIA WARD HOWE. 41 

chusetts urging pure food laws that the Hves 
of the children might be saved. When death 
was at her very bedside she was planning that 
the child of Garibaldi, the Liberator, might 
receive from America the honor due that father's 
child. 

Greece knew and received her bounty. Hun- 
gary's champion found in her a helper. Italy 
was almost as beloved by her as her own 
land. The oppressed of far-off Armenia found 
in her alike the tenderness of a woman and 
the sturdy championship of a man. As an 
exponent of the abstruse doctrines of philosophy 
she stood as a teacher on the lecture platform; 
as an apostle of the religious creed that was 
hers she even occupied the pulpit. 

Of those who knew her and worked beside 
her as comrades in the days of her prime, 
Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mr, 
Frank B. Sanborn still survive. Colonel Hig- 
ginson 's beautiful tribute to her memory is 
familiar. It is Mr. Sanborn who in a few pithy 
sentences gives of her home life in those days 
the following picture: 

"I was introduced gradually into that goodly 
congregation (which never all met together) 
during my college years and met Mrs. Howe 
and her philanthropic husband, fifty-eight years 
ago, at the house, first, of Theodore Parker, 
and soon after at their own, that abode of 
'Green Peace' in South Boston, which received 



42 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 

SO many guests from all parts of the world. 
Thither had come and gone Dickens, Kossuth, 
Carl Schurz, Michael Anagnos, John Brown, — 
the Greek monk, the Italian exile, the Polish 
poet, the Cierman philosopher, the champions 
of Kansas, the hunted fugitive slave and his 
preserver and legal defender. To all these 
varied personages and interests Mrs. Howe 
was in some manner related, and each and all 
exercised some influence on her extended and 
vivacious life." 

An accomplished musician, Mrs. Howe found 
in good music a field for relaxation as she 
found in literature a field for work. The amount 
of literary and editorial labor she accomplished 
cannot be measured. Fortunately^, not all even 
of her writings in prose were for newspapers. 
Her books on travel — ''A Trip to Cuba," for 
example, or ''From the Oak to the Olive" — 
witness that the light touch of agreeable de- 
scription and comment was hers as well as the 
more powerful chords that were struck in her 
forensical compositions. As a writer she will 
live longest, however, I think, in her verses, in 
which the fancy that is set free by the moon- 
light and awakes with the spring flowers is 
mingled with the deep emotion of the mother 
with reverence for great cities and great men 
and with an almost inspired rage against 
triumphant wrong. 



HONOR OF JULIA WARD HOWE. 43 

Yet if men should at last cease to turn the 
leaves of ''Passion Flowers" and of "Words for 
the Hour," there never can come a time when 
they will cease to sing the "Battle Hymn of the 
Republic." 

Nor need we necessarily grieve if the splendor 
of this one poem should in time cast a shadow 
over the rest. 

Few but the curious scholar can quote off- 
hand the poem whence comes the proverb, 
"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." 
Still fewer are familiar with the same poet's 
ode on the death of a favorite cat. Yet, while 
English literature lives, the matchless verse and 
diction of a single poem, ''Elegy Written in a 
Country Churchyard," will hold for Thomas Gray 
the admiration of mankind. 

Almost exactly a century ago there died a 
young soldier fighting for his country's liberty. 
Even his rank in the army is generally for- 
gotten. Outside his native land most of his 
poems may not be generally read, not even the 
stirring lines of Lutzow's "Wilde Jagd": 

''Die Wolkeii verziehen 
Hurrah, ihr Jager, der Morgen bricht an." 

But while love of country lasts anywhere in 
the world men must rise to honor the "Sword 
Song" of Theodor Korner, the song that roused, 
not the squabbling little principalities, but the 



44 MEMORIAL P]XERCLSES IN 

great mass of the German folk to rise up and 
burst the chains in which Napoleon sought to 
bind them. 

Du Schwerdt an meiner IJnken 
Was soil deiii heitres Bliiiken? 
Schauft mich so freundlich an! 
Halj moin Freude dran — 
Hurrah! 

So Korner sang and died, but the fires of 
national i^ride and devotion kindled by that 
song did not stay their course with the suc- 
cessful destruction of a foreign yoke. They 
burned away most of the boundaries that kept 
German from German until from the ashes 
of Korner's sacrifice there flew aloft the mighty 
eagle of the German Empire, whose pinions 
flutter in every nook and corner of the world. 

The ''Battle Hymn of the Republic" was 
written by Mrs. Howe, as she herself descrii:)es 
it, in Washington, on the back of some sheets 
of paper stamped with the mark of that noble 
body of jmtriotic men and women, the United 
States Sanitary Commission. It was in Novem- 
ber, 1861. The country was in a condition of 
discouragement. Bull Run had been fought and 
lost. INlrs. Howe had been hurried back from 
a review outside the city cut short by the 
advance of Confederate troops. The company 
in the carriage sang soldiers' songs to cheer 
them, one being "John Brown's Body." Mr. 
Clarke, her pastor, suggested to Mrs. Howe 



HONOR OF JULIA WARD HOWE. 45 

writing a more fitting set of stanzas. She 
retired without having been abl(^ to think out 
a single hne. Awakening in the gray of the 
morning the verses came one after another 
into her head, and springing from her bed she 
rapidly wrote them down with ^'an old stump 
of a pen" before they could elude her, and 
immediately afterward fell askn^p. 

The poem was first printed in the ''Atlantic 
Monthly." It (quickly found its way to camp, 
to hospital, to Southern prison, and became 
then, what it must ever remain, the one supreme 
call of the Loyal North to the Valiant for 
Truth. 

There has been well-nigh as much controversy 
over the authorship of the music that Mrs. 
Howe selected as over the authorship of that 
other popular musical composition which has been 
used in turn for the words of the song, ''God 
Save the King," for the Prussian "Heil Dir 
Im Siegeskranz," for the Danish national hymn 
and for the Swiss national hymn as well as 
for Dr. Smith's "America." 

I am indebted to the researches of Mr. John 
B. Clapp for a story of the rise of the music 
of "John Brown's Body" to popularity. The 
music was heard b}^ Mr. Thane Miller of Cin- 
cinnati at a colored church in Charleston, S. C, 
in 1859. Its simple and stirring equalities so 
impressed him that in attending afterwards a 
convention of the Young Men's Christian Asso- 



46 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IX 

ciation at Albany, he utilized the music for 
words of his own with "Say, Brothers, Will 
You Meet ]Me?" as the choral line. 

Shortly afterwards, by an odd coincidence, 
in the archives of the Old Harvard Church in 
Charlestown, Mass., its organist, ]\Ir. Greenleaf, 
found the music and found that the notes 
fitted \'ery well to a fugitive verse that was 
going the rounds of the Press. The author of 
the first stanza of "John Brown's Body" is 
unknown. The Glee Club of the Boston Light 
Infantry, then getting ready for the war, picked 
up this first stanza with the music and sang 
it with tremendous effect. ]Mr. C S. Hall was 
then asked to write some further verses. He 
is the author of the remaining stanzas of "John 
Brown's Body," but not of the first one. 

An issue of the Pall Mall Gazette in 1865 
prints as a passing paragraph that the street 
boys of London had learned to prefer "John 
Brown's Body" to "Maryland, ]\Iy ^Maryland," 
or the ''Bonny Blue Flag," an interesting bit 
of contemporary evidence as to the American 
war music which first secured a hold of the 
popular ear across the Atlantic. 

Such was the song and its origin. The influ- 
ence of popular song upon human history is not 
overstated in the familiar proverb. 

The Pilgrims of Plymouth were not the only ones 
who sang amidst the storm. It is impossible to 
think of Gustavus Adolphus and Lutzen without 



HONOR OF JULIA WARD HOWE. 47 

remembering ''Ein fcste Burg ist unser Gott." It 
is impossible to think of Bennington's victory 
without the fife and drum and ''Yankee Doodle." 
You cannot recall Gravelotte and ]\Iars le Tour 
without an echo of the booming chorus of "Die 
Wacht am Rhein," nor the Highlander's charge 
at Culloden without the "White Cockade" nor the 
stern march of the Crusaders without the solemn 
chanting of St. Bernard's glorious appeal, "Jeru- 
salem the Golden." 

Literature has its muckrakers as well as public 
life. There are, I know^, a breed of literary vivi- 
sectors who view all composition with a magnify- 
ing glass that they may discover and proclaim the 
slightest microscopic lesion. 

These gentry have discovered, I believe, some 
mixing of metaphors in the second and third lines 
of the first stanza of :\Irs. Howe's great battle hymn 
of the North, where the imagery of a wine presser 
is supposed to be confused with that of a warrior. 

^yhat of it? 

The songs that have roused nations are none of 
them to be judged by the measure of I\Ir. Pope's 
poUshed but prim measures. The polished crystal 
rouses man's admiration in the seclusion of his 
study, but it is the rough monohth that startles his 
attention from the dull level of the storm-.swept 
plain. 

Outside of hymn and sacred song I think we 
shall agree that no two songs have by words 
and music so stirred alike the bodies and the 



48 MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN 

souls of men not only to battle for victory but 
to die even hopeless deaths as "The Wearing 
of the Green" and "The Marseillaise." The 
same kind of person that finds more pleasure in 
the analytical dismemberment of a rose than 
in the enjoyment of its perfect scent and beauty 
has pointed out as a botanical fact that 
a shamrock if taken from the hat and cast 
upon the sod could not possibly take root and 
flourish still if under foot 'twas trod. What 
has that to do with the soul of the song? It 
isn't the analysis of the grasses and leaves that 
we are thinking. It's the splendid imagery of 
the gallantry of the Celt, beaten but uncon- 
quered, who with a jest upon his lips goes to 
keep his appointment with Death — the picture, 
if I may name one of many and in many lands, 
of the tattered little gossoon at Vinegar Hill 
setting his naked baby breast close against the 
loaded cannon's mouth and calling to the pike- 
men who followed him, "Come on, boys, I've 
stopped the mouth of the beast." 

Similar critics have asserted that if the 
soldiers of tyrants are to be portrayed in one 
line of "La Marseillaise" as mad bellowing bulls 
it should be remembered that bulls cannot cut 
throats as they are made to do in another. 

Rubbish! How the tremendous sweep of that 
glorious lyric brushes aside any and all of such 
puerile consideration as epithet after epithet 
stings France to freedom alike from foreign 



HONOR OF JULIA WARD HOWE. 49 

tyrants and from her own. This was the song 
that nerved those men whose story is too httle 
known to-day, the starving, freezing soldiers of 
the First Republic, the men who, marching 
wath naked feet, fought in winter snows against 
a united Europe armed by emperors, fought 
that France might be France, neither a subject 
province to foreign dominion nor the plaything 
of a king. The inspiration lay not in any 
nicety of rhetoric but in the great untrammeled 
shout for freedom. 

Cushing dying in his battery at Gettys))urg, 
Bartlett strapped to his saddle leading forlorn 
hopes, the torn and w^ounded remnants of the 
First Minnesota with four-fifths of their com- 
rades on the field behind them, but three 
captured battle flags in their hands, Winslow 
sweeping the pirate from the sea in the face 
of a hostile Europe, the agonized skeletons of 
Andersonville, Shaw at the head of his black 
regiment at Wagner, the Bloody Angle at Spott- 
sylvania, and at last the meeting of two great 
men at Appomattox, one to return in triumph 
to Washington, the other to return in sorrow 
to his home to use his great influence that the 
arbitrament of a great cause by war should not 
degenerate into mountain murders by guerillas 
organized against society,— these and such as 
these are the glorious phantoms that rising dimly 
before our eyes make us choke wdien we sing 
our battle hymn. 



50 JULIA WARD HOWE MEMORIAL EXERCISES. 

The woman of letters, the philanthropist, the 
reformer — these are titles enough worn worthily 
to continue this woman's fame, but Julia Ward 
Howe has left behind her more than this. The 
philosopher may promote a nation's intellect, 
the historian may perfect its records, the poet 
may uplift its letters and its ideals, but Julia 
Ward Howe stands with Rouget de Lisle and 
Theodor Korner and those other happy mortals 
to whom it has been given, to awake a nation's 
very soul. 

Monuments may and must be upraised in her 
honor, but not to her memory, for while one 
of her countrymen is left alive the memory can 
never fail of her to whom in the midst of utter 
darkness was given that splendid and prophetic 
vision — 

''Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming 
of the Lord." 



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